Introduction:
The Covid-19 pandemic witnessed the advent of the rise of businesses surrounding the home ecosystem as people picked up interests and hobbies at home. Two activities that saw an upward trend are home gardening and home decor. The lockdown channeled everyone’s inner gardeners and designers and an interesting overlap between these two created a new space called Green Home Decor.
Besides beautification, there is a demand for various plants that serve different purposes such as air purification, stress reduction, and healing. Currently, there are 2 channels that service this demand - Traditional offline nurseries and online nurseries. Although, consumers experience a multitude of challenges with both these channels. While traditional nurseries fail to provide purchasing convenience online nurseries on the other hand fail to assure quality. Both channels lack variety and at the same time offer standard unattractive pots that fail to provide home decor solutions.
Here’s where Greenkin comes in and provides a holistic solution to all these problems. Greenkin is building a premium consumer brand under the Home Gardening segment, selling premium potted plants and accessories. Greenkin brings an experiential buying experience with a large variety of plants and quality assurance checks that ensure end-to-end customer serviceability and satisfaction. What sets Greenkin apart from its competitors is their ability to deliver plants in large plots.
In the current market, purchasing experience of home-gardening is extremely poor. One can often struggle to figure out which plant best suits their requirements. Surely, one can purchase the plant they want but often find themselves confused with knowing the best location to place the plant, which pot would look best with it and several other factors. Greenkin’s revolutionary purchasing experience known as Plantscaping allows customers to view pre-potted plants in the location most suitable in the house and offers pre-beautified plants, making the customer’s decision-making process very convenient.
Exploratory customers are interested in purchasing newer plants but lack the knowledge to make the right choices. There are several factors that keep a plant healthy and green, and amateurs can often make mistakes in preserving the plant. Greenkin’s large variety of plants with clear filtering options based on convenience, lighting, purpose, design, and size vividly define purchasing intent. Besides, with the current sellers in the market, there is a consistent failure in the quality offering. Damage in transit and shorter life span of plants are prevalent issues. However, Greenkin solves this problem with its extensive quality assurance checks and innovative custom packaging solution. At Greenkin, all plants are nourished appropriately before delivery and potted with perfection so that a customer is given the best home gardening experience. Greenkin has complete control over their supply-chain. It sources plants, pots and everything in between from 7 different states in India, and then assembles a truly remarkable product at 10,000 sq.ft. state of the art solar powered hub near Mumbai.
Greenkin is founded by a husband-wife duo who are gardening enthusiasts themselves. Both being extremely passionate about gardening spent a lot of time learning innovative gardening techniques, giving birth to the idea of Greenkin. Abhilash Pandey is a second-time founder who successfully sold his first venture, backed by Chiratae Ventures and Axilor. He is an IIM Calcutta graduate and an engineer with extensive tech experience having worked at Facebook and Microsoft. Ritika Wadhawan is an engineer, with an MBA from IMI, New Delhi and has worked at Deloitte before starting Greenkin.
Market Opportunity:
The current home gardening market is worth $397 billion in size and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8% and is expected to reach a value of $538 billion by 2025. The market saw a 100% increase in global online sales from 2019 to 2020. What makes this market extremely lucrative is that 29% of all home gardeners are now millennials.
100X.VC Thesis:
Abhilash is a serial entrepreneur, who built one startup and exited. The home gardening industry in India is growing rapidly but is currently served with below-par services and products. Greenkin is looking to formalise the space with a strong focus on customer service, and product quality. The team has a history of building and exiting venture-backed businesses. They have built a model that puts them far ahead on logistics, quality of product, and customer experience as compared to other players. 100X.VC believes this team will build the premier consumer marketplace for all things home gardening in this burgeoning market.
Conclusion:
Greenkin has identified genuine friction points that a customer faces in the current market. It has taken a customer-first approach and is offering solutions revolving around the customer. With its ease of purchase experience, a large variety of product offerings and pathbreaking logistics and quality assurance standards, Greenkin is a clear disruptor in this space as it creates a perfect blend of service and design.
